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Buildings produce a large proportion of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions and municipalities control a number of policy levers that can help to reduce those emissions. This article explains variation among Canadian cities regarding policies adopted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with a particular focus on green building standards. By applying insights from the study of the politics of public policy to urban politics, this article finds that while electoral disincentives prevent most cities from enacting high impact green building policies, the success of some cities can be attributed to the influence of independent municipal environment departments. These departments facilitate policy learning by providing information and resources. The findings suggest that policy makers could improve the effectiveness of local climate change policy by creating municipal environment departments that have organizational capacity—funding, staff, and a cross-cutting mandate—and are insulated from interference from politicians and line departments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper proposes the analysis of policies as the result of hegemonic phenomena. This perspective understands the diffusion of frames of reference as a phenomenon that is intrinsically conflictual. In so doing, our aim is to work around one of the main problems in the existing literature focused on the role of ideas and discourses: it tends to neglect the cognitive and symbolic struggles in which agents, who possess unequal resources, are engaged. We suggest analyzing the organization of a hegemonic phenomenon by focusing on the debates related to agri-environmental policies in England, France and Hungary. Generally, this article contributes an original outlook on the production of political order. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]